Out of curiousity, does anyone think that there should be
a rule out there that a node that has negative reputation cannot be front paged. This has possibly been discussed before, but I just noticed it with How do I use Perl. Of course the replies have positive reputation, should that be part of the critera? Node with negative reputation but has replies with positive reputation is okay to be Front Paged? Or just a flat rule that no Parent node with negative reputation is allowed on the front page? Then again, maybe I'm just being picky. What do you all think?

Well, as any friar+ knows, I was the one who approved that node. I was particularly incensed that it had been put up for consideration as "Idiotic". I found the attitude of the person who did that repugnant, and now that it's been reaped, I find it doubly so.

I think I concur with bluto's reply on that thread. There are several clear, informative, useful answers to that question on the thread, and the root node is gone. What was so wrong with that question? Are we really at the point where we believe, "Don't come here if you don't know Perl"? "If all you have is the desire to learn, you're not welcome." Is that really the message we're trying to send?

I think How do I use Perl deserved to be on the front page, because it showed that people here care more about answering questions than belittling questioners. I think that attitude is best illustrated in 1st monasterians, by one of our most valued members. Read it and remember it, it's a great guideline.

I agree with chromatic that 'itchy trigger fingers' can
be a bit of a problem here. Recently I've seen quite
a few nodes considered
which end up being kept--and
rightfully so, because they don't meet the criteria
by which nodes should be deleted. Every single one
of these nodes has to be manually removed from
nodes to consider.

To quote from What is consideration?: "Request that
a node be deleted. Please do this for
blatant trolls (egregiously offensive)
and true duplicates...For useless, stupid,
off-topic, and annoying nodes: if it is a
root node, then don't approve it for any
section; if it is a reply, just ignore it."

I think it is becoming neccessary to limit the power
to consider nodes. I'm against 'raising the bar' to
a higher level because I think that just keeps newer
people from participating. In my opinion it would
be better to allow a group (power users, perhaps) to
be able to prevent a person from using consideration
for a period of time in much the same way someone can
be kept from the chatterbox temporarily.

It has been suggested that this be linked to response
to the consideration, but I don't really care for
duplicate purpose voting. What if
someone made a mistake and accidently considered a
node when intending to message, or considered the
wrong duplicate? It also starts to seem a bit circular
with meta consideration for the consideration, will we
soon need meta meta consideration? For that reason,
I'd rather see a selected group responsible for this
(and note that I'm *not* a member of power users, whom
I recommend for the task).

As for the specific node in question that was reaped,
I'm of the opinion that it should be reinstated.
There were several interesting answers to the question,
and it looks as if
enough people here would have voted keep if they'd been
around at the time it was considered.

On the subject of not allowing the front-paging of
negative nodes, I don't see any need for it. The Gates
should contain a spectrum of nodes, and if there is
disagreement over the front-paging of a node, the mechanism
is already in place to remove it from the front page.
However, I admit to not reading the Gates at all, so
I'm not sure if front-paging nodes is a widespread
problem.

I think that you have a good point there. Especially what you said about attitude. I think that at times, programmers with experience forget what it's like - when they first started programming and give attitude. Granted, we all give attitude once in awhile - but we shouldn't forget to share our knowledge with those who are trying to learn. Isn't that why we're here? To learn, to help others, to share knowledge...

But, a side note on this main post - I think Moonie is talking in general and that they just brought up that post as an example (course, that's my impression). I personally think that if there is knowledge to be shared in a node - it should be on the front page. At times, one who is new here has a tuff time knowing how to phrase a question right - and will get a --, but usually even those posts get some great answers and the new monk learns how to post (usually a monk will comment or tip the new monk in the right direction on how to post here). So, not all is lost - not even on a parent node that receives a -- from time to time.

Whew! I was beginning to think that nobody else felt this way. I fessed up a week or so ago to having once frontpaged 2 nodes with negative reps on the same day. At the time I frontpaged them, I had no idea what the reps were, I just knew that there were many thoughful, useful replies in the threads. This was before the "fink" tags were added.

I imagine that most people can surmise that an apparently "dumb" question that was frontpaged with a negative or low rep must have some awfully good responses to it. If not, then it should be considered.

As the monk that considered that node with the rather terse reason of "idiotic", I'd like to at least explain.
I'm also surprised that I didn't get some sort of /msg.

I'm very surprised that a non-specific question "How do I use Perl?" was not considered before even I got to it.
If it was such a great node, it wouldn't have been reaped - plenty other monks would vote "keep" and/or ++ the node.

I'm not trying to make a big thing of it - it just looked like a troll.

If the question had been "How do I use Perl to do $foo", or "How do I run the perl interpreter when I want to achieve $bar", I probably would have replied to the node, rather than put it up for consideration.

I find it rather insulting that my attitude is considered repugnant - I might not be the most experienced of Monks, but I at least expected my previous contributions would show that's not how I normally behave.

Thank you for the explanation: I can see your logic. Perhaps I'd make a difference between dumb but potentially honest questions and malicious questions. Examples:
How do I run a Perl program in my browser?

from vr00m: how do u write a web site, b!0Tch3zzzzzzzzz!! suck it down
Unfortunately, they're not always that obvious.

In my opinion, dumb questions don't deserve reaping. Questions from a poster who may not have read the manual don't deserve reaping. Questions that may potentially be homework don't deserve reaping. Questions that produce good discussion don't deserve reaping.

Granted, in this case several other people agreed with the delete vote, but I suspect there's less of a mental hurdle needed to decide to reap a node after it's already been considered.

There were actually 14 "keep" votes. This should mean that it couldn't have been automatically reaped. I asked a few gods if they had reaped the node by hand and was not surprised to hear only "no" responses. There still may be a member of gods that did the reaping that I didn't talk with. Or there might be a security problem that allowed a non-god to reap the node. Or there might be a bug that caused the auto-reaping to happen despite the "keep" votes.

But my best guess is that one of the gods reaped the node by accident. In any case, it will be unreaped soon (no, I won't go into the details of why I can't just unreap it now).

And I'll keep my eyes open for evidence of the other possible explanations.

Thanks for the calm and clear reply, BazB. I do realize you've been around the monastery a while, but I didn't refer to you specifically in my note (I knew you'd put it on NTC) because I didn't think it was appropriate to single you out. Frankly, I wrote that note when I was angry, which I tell people not to do. I apologize for insulting you. That wasn't my intent.

What I did intend is to tell everyone that I think consideration is being abused. I think people are using the power to perpetuate elitism, rather than to get rid of abusive nodes. Some cases are grayer than others, but I agree with chromatic and kudra: it's better to err on the side of caution.

I'd be willing to implement a "only editors can front-page nodes if the reputation is less than (or equal to) zero" 'feature', if there is support for such (either with or without the "or equal to" part). Personally I'd include the "or equal to" part so that a node has to have a positive reputation before you can front-page it.

Still, two people were involved to both Approve it and Frontpage it, and anyone with the ability to do these things can easily find out who these individuals are, perhaps questions like this could be directed there.

This is perhaps not the best thread for such speculation, but I'd personally like to see some sort of value for "tension" on a node, some ratio of ++ vs --, after I've voted on said node. Regardless of that vote, the "tension" could be useful to those considering nodes, independent of whether they voted on its rep previously or not. If not some sort of informational display while considering a particular node, then the "tension" could be factored into the reap formula behind the scenes.

Well the nice thing about "tension" is that it would measure the magnitude of active indecisiveness without revealing the actual vote count; this way you could get feedback prior to voting or considering without revealing the raw votes.

I was going to post something about the responces to the post but Moonie beat me to it.

How is the question idiotic? Not all people are computer literate and not all people program. Should we turn away people that decide they want to try Perl and are not sure what to do with it?

And for that matter, the question of homework problems. There are good questions as well as bad. Just because somebody is doing homework, is it wrong they come here and ask for help because their hash is not working? This is different from somebody asking us to do their work for them. It would seem people forget they were Noobs at one point as well.

People did get rather nasty about How do I use Perl in fact my responce was at -5 at one point. But overall other Monks did offer help to the person.

As to the question of him being a Troll? He didn't follow through like a troll so it is a good bet it was an honest question.

Maybe I missed the rule about asking dumb questions. But I for one will continue to advise as I see fit.

As to Moonies original question. If the question has merit, it should be upfront. Other monks complain about the anons comming here and posting repeated or ignorant questions; A noob question is frontpaged which could point other Noobs in the right direction and they complain about that. I guess some people will never be satisified.

Without mentioning any names, I think that some monks are way too trigger-happy with the frontpaging, as some are with considering for deletion. In addition to the different proposals above, I'd like to suggest that a person can only frontpage a certain number of nodes every week.

I realize that what people think is worthy of the frontpage is very different, and I respect others opinions - but I tend to see a few names after "Frontpaged by" a little too often, and a bit too often on quite uninteresting nodes (in my subjective opinion, which isn't enough I know).

I think a cap on this might enforce some thought before frontpaging.

Note that this has little to do with if the above mentioned node should have been frontpaged or not (or deleted), but I rather took the chance to add a general view on the system if there is a chance this part of the system goes in for a revamp/overhaul soon. It was also quite recently discussed in the thread Am I a power-mad Friar?.

You have moved into a dark place.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

It raised a lot of interesting discussion. I enjoyed
reading the responses, and I think they're of particularly
high quality. In other words, worth showing off.

It seemed an appropriate question to show newbies
when they first visit the site. I imagine we get a fair
bit of traffic from curious people who want to learn more
about Perl. Lo and behold, their first question has
already been asked, and well answered.